What's new on this site: October-December 2007

For more details, with links, of the latest batch of updates, see the
update page.

19 December 2007:

New material

In the Feet of Fines section, abstracts of fines for Berkshire (1501-1509) (33 fines), Buckinghamshire (1358-1509) (926 fines) and Northamptonshire (1357-1509) (971 fines) have been added.

Professor Robert Palmer's already huge Anglo-American Legal Tradition project,
which is making images of thousands of medieval English legal records available online, has recently been extended to take in most of the 13th century,
by including the reign of Henry III. It will now also include the feet of fines up to 1509, and images of about 2800 of them - for the counties of Hertfordshire (1358-1509),
Northamptonshire (1357-1509) and Oxfordshire (1335-1509) - have already been uploaded to the AALT website,
with further counties due to be added next year. I have included links to these images in the Feet of Fines section of this website.

New links

A brief guide to medieval English genealogy:

Published works, bibliographies and indexes:

Dictionary of National Biography (Google Book Search)The original edition, now superseded by the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Manorial documents:

Charles Calthrope, The relation betweene the lord of a mannor and the coppy-holder his tenant. (1635; reprinted 1917) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)Manorial Society, number 10.

Handwriting and language:

Latin Dictionary (Babylon)

Medieval source material on the Internet:

Some internet libraries:

The Original RecordAn extensive database of hand-indexed records, including many published medieval sources. There is a free search facility for occurrences of a surname within a specified range of dates, and wildcards can be used to allow for spelling variations. The lists of results identify the sources, so that the database can be used as a finding aid by those with access to good reference libraries (real or virtual). For others, scans of the published records can be viewed online for a fee (typically between 2 and 6 pounds per volume).

John Brownbill, ed., The royalist composition papers; being the proceedings of the committee for compounding, A.D. 1643-1660, so far as they relate to the county of Lancaster ... Volume 5. P-R. (1917) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, volume 72.

Charters:

A descriptive catalogue of ancient deeds in the Public Record Office. Volume 1 (1890) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

A descriptive catalogue of ancient deeds in the Public Record Office. Volume 2 (1894) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

A descriptive catalogue of ancient deeds in the Public Record Office. Volume 3 (1900) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

A descriptive catalogue of ancient deeds in the Public Record Office. Volume 4 (1902) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

A descriptive catalogue of ancient deeds in the Public Record Office. Volume 5 (1906) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

A descriptive catalogue of ancient deeds in the Public Record Office. Volume 6 (1915) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

William Thomas Lancaster, Abstracts of the charters and other documents contained in the chartulary of the priory of Bridlington in the East Riding of the county of York (1912) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

Henry J. Ellis, ed., Index to the charters and rolls in the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum. Volume 2. Religious houses and other corporations, and Index locorum for acquisitions from 1882 to 1900. (1912) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)

William Farrer, ed., Some court rolls of the lordships, wapentakes, and demesne manors of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in the county of Lancaster, ... A.D. 1323-4. (1901) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, volume 41. English translations.

Probate records:

Buckinghamshire Wills Database 1483-1858 (Buckinghamshire County Council/Buckinghamshire Family History Society)Index of over 35,000 wills proved in the archdeaconry court, and of some of the administrations granted.

Wiltshire Wills Project (Wiltshire County Council)Searchable catalogue of 105,000 wills from the diocese of Salisbury, 1540-1858. Images of the original documents are being added, and are free to view; as of November 2007, images are available for about 25% of the wills.

Church records and religious houses:

[G. W. Kitchin, ed.] Richard D'Aungerville [bishop of Durham], of Bury. Fragments of his register, and other documents. (1910) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)Surtees Society, volume 119. Latin transcripts of a fragment of his register, 1343-4, and other documents.

The Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (Universities of Helsinki and York)A sample of more than three quarters of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. As well as the raw text, this includes a version marked up to indicate syntactical structure. A manual is available online.

Bumpas / Bumpass / Bumpus / Bompass/ Bonpas etc of Britain (Rosie and John Wells)Includes some notes of early occurrences of the surname in England.

C:

Anthony Hoskins, Mary Boleyn's Carey Children - Offspring of King Henry VIII? (GenealogyMagazine.com)Article originally published in the Genealogists' Magazine (1997), arguing that the children of William Carey's wife Mary (née Boleyn) may have been fathered by Henry VIII.

H:

Hebden Family (John Hebden)Notes on Hebden families from Yorkshire and elsewhere, mostly collected by John Hebden and David Jackson.

S:

Storm and Company - the Early Years (Roy Storm)Includes some 16th-century references to the Storm family of Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire.

W:

Whitney Research GroupIncludes a section on medieval Whitney families, together with material extracted from primary and secondary sources.

Links:

Specialist book sellers:

Paul Meekins Military and History BooksIncludes an extensive medieval section.

Miscellaneous:

The Internet Surname DatabaseA database containing information on the origins of surnames, with details of early occurrences. Compiled from various sources, including Bardsley's Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames and Reaney's Dictionary of British Surnames.